The Dying Beach

by Angela Savage

  As it happened, both their visas were due to expire not long after Thai New Year. In the past, Jayne had done her visa runs to Laos, as it was closest and cheapest. But having worked solidly through February and March without a break—Rajiv honing his surveillance skills, Jayne improving her use of the computer—they’d saved enough money to combine a visa run to Malaysia with a few days’ sightseeing in Krabi.

  Jayne couldn’t believe it had taken her five years to discover the beauty of Thailand’s Andaman coast. She squeezed Rajiv’s hand as they paused on their beach walk to gaze at the view. Bathed in white-gold light and shimmering in the heat, the bay of islands seemed unreal, a magical world poised to disappear into the mist like Avalon. Rajiv, likewise, seemed part of that mythical world. With his black eyes, pointed beard and sun-darkened skin, he was a gold earring and a parrot short of a starring role in Treasure Island. But his hand in hers was real. And in this place, away from the demands of work, with thinking time to spare, she found her strongest doubts no match for how good it felt to be with him.

  ‘In the past, villagers called this beach Hat Khlong Haeng, the dry stream beach, because the tide goes out so far it appears to drain the nearby canal,’ he told her, eyes on the horizon. ‘You can walk to the nearest islands at low tide.’

  ‘Now, how does a boy from Bangalore know a thing like that?’

  Rajiv nodded his head from side to side, a gesture as nuanced as Thai smiles, Jayne had come to realise. This one she thought of as his ‘elementary, my dear’, surely-it’s-obvious nod. His vast general knowledge had become a game between them. Jayne’s challenge was to introduce a subject Rajiv knew nothing about. So far, she was losing.

  They headed to the coast road and waved down a songthaew, a pick-up truck with two benches in the tray, which served as public transport in the area. Their destination, Ao Nang, was the next beach to the east, separated from Nopparat Thara by a small headland. Although only five minutes away, Ao Nang was Krabi’s main resort town and was significantly more developed, the jumping-off point for day trips to its exquisite islands and beaches. Two days earlier, Jayne and Rajiv had taken a Four Islands tour with a twenty-something Thai guide nicknamed Pla. They’d enjoyed themselves so much, Pla proving to be an exceptional guide, that they planned to book a second day trip with her.

  The counter at Barracuda Tours was staffed by a boyish young man with gel-spiked hair and mirrored sunglasses. A stocky girl sat on a low plastic stool behind him, eating noodle soup. Both wore lolly-pink polo shirts with a blue fish embroidered over their hearts.

  ‘Sawadee krup,’ the boy said with a beaming smile.

  ‘Sawadee ka. Which tour is Miss Pla taking today?’ Jayne asked in Thai.

  The young man’s smile froze. ‘Miss Pla?’ he said.

  ‘Ka,’ Jayne nodded. ‘She took us on the Four Islands tour on Thursday.’

  ‘Miss Pla?’ he said again.

  ‘Ka, ka.’

  The girl set aside her noodles and poked her head above the counter, a lazy eye making her appear to look left and right at the same time.

  ‘Miss Pla is dead already.’

  ‘What?’ Jayne said in English. She reverted to Thai. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Dead,’ the girl said again, matter of fact.

  Jayne saw her own shock reflected in the boy’s sunglasses. ‘But how?’

  ‘Accident,’ the girl said. ‘She drowned.’

  ‘Sia jai—’

  ‘Jayne?’ Rajiv placed his hand on her arm. ‘Am I understanding correctly that something has happened to Miss Pla?’

  ‘This girl is saying that Pla died in a drowning accident. Nae jai mai?’ Jayne asked the girl. ‘Are you sure we are talking about the same person?’

  ‘Only one Pla here. Short hair, dark skin. Goong haeng.’

  Pla had been on the slender side, but referring to her as a dried shrimp seemed a bit harsh. Jayne relayed the information to Rajiv, who shook his head.

  ‘I am not believing it,’ he said.

  She squeezed his arm, turned back to the girl behind the counter. ‘Younger sister, we’re very sorry to hear about Miss Pla. Do you know what happened?’

  ‘The police came yesterday,’ the boy piped up.

  ‘The Ao Nang police?’ Jayne asked.

  The girl elbowed the boy aside. ‘Chai, chai.’ She nodded. ‘They say she drowned. Her body was in the water more than eight hours.’ The girl was more excited than horrified by the news. Only her wildly wandering eye seemed attuned to the ghastliness of what she was saying.

  ‘Where was she found?’

  The girl shrugged.

  ‘Who found her?’

  The girl shrugged again.

  Jayne changed tack. ‘Do you know who I could talk to about the funeral arrangements?’

  The girl tilted her head. ‘Try Suthita, Pla’s roommate.’ She picked up a pen with her left hand, wrote an address on a small square of paper and slid it across the counter. Still holding the pen, she smiled as if they’d just walked in the door. ‘So what tour can I book you on today?’

  2

  ‘Did you say the girl is dead?’

  Even shovelling gravel, Othong could overhear his uncle Bapit’s conversation. The old man treated his new mobile phone the way he treated his employees, as if it couldn’t be trusted to work unless he was shouting at it.

  ‘Yes, well, thanks for letting me know.’ Bapit pressed the button hard to terminate the call. Othong guessed he’d soon wear the numbers off the keypad.

  ‘Who died, Uncle?’ he asked, resting his arms on the handle of his shovel.

  ‘You wouldn’t remember her,’ Bapit said. ‘Girl involved in the power plant consultations. Gave me nothing but grief and now she’s dead.’

  Othong took umbrage at his uncle’s assumption and racked his brain for an image of the girl. He always tried to exceed his uncle’s low expectations of him, even though he rarely succeeded.

  ‘The dark skinny one?’ he ventured. ‘Worked as a tour guide?’

  Bapit continued as though Othong hadn’t spoken. ‘I’d kill to get my hands on that notebook of hers, find out what misinformation the little bitch was sending to Bangkok. Maybe now she’s out of the way, things might move on at last.’

  ‘What’s that, Uncle?’

  Bapit looked at his nephew and frowned as though suddenly annoyed to find him there. A look all too familiar to Othong.

  ‘What are you doing eavesdropping on my conversations?’ the old man barked. ‘Get back to work. You don’t see the other boys slacking off, do you? You might be family, but I expect you to put in as hard a day’s work as any man. Harder, since it’s the family business and you have a greater stake.’

  The lecture was not new. Othong returned to his labour, making a point of shovelling two loads for every one of the next-fastest man. Not that Uncle Bapit noticed. The old man had twenty-twenty vision when it came to Othong’s faults and a blind spot for his strengths.

  The more Bapit criticised Othong, the more determined the young man became to please his uncle. Like surviving an endurance test at the gym, or the kinds of challenges his cousin Vidura used to throw down. Climb higher up that mountain. Go deeper into that cave.

  Bapit might have dismissed him but the exchange planted the seed of an idea in Othong’s mind, and he wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to earn the old man’s respect.

  3

  The news of Pla’s death left neither Jayne nor Rajiv with any desire to go on a tour. Rajiv wasn’t keen on a visit to the Ao Nang police station either—it felt too much like work when they were supposed to be on holiday—but Jayne promised to make it quick so he indulged her.

  The walk from the tour agency to the police station took them along the beach road. The sky was a cloudless blue, the sea so beautiful it should have lifted Rajiv’s spirits. Instead, it heightened his sadness to think of Pla forever denied this beauty.

  Though they’d known her only for a day, Pla had left a big impres
sion on him. Unlike Jayne, Rajiv was not a strong swimmer. While she leaped off the boat into the water whenever they stopped at one of the islands, Rajiv only walked along the beaches or remained on board.

  At one point the boat was moored off Chicken Island, named for a rock formation that looked remarkably like a chicken’s head and neck. Jayne grabbed a mask and snorkel and plunged in to examine the surrounding coral, while Rajiv watched anxiously from the prow. After a while, she swam back towards the boat.

  ‘Can’t I convince you to join me?’ she called out, treading water. ‘You’d love it. You could tell me the names of all the beautiful fish down here.’

  Rajiv shook his head. ‘The water is too deep for me.’

  ‘You could try with a life jacket,’ she said. ‘Or are you too chicken?’

  Rajiv forced himself to smile though his pride was hurt.

  ‘At the next island we can snorkel in the shallows right off the beach,’ Pla said, arriving alongside him. ‘And the fish are even more beautiful there.’

  ‘But I’ve never snorkelled before,’ Rajiv said.

  ‘Mai pen rai. Never mind. I can teach you.’

  Pla was true to her word. When the boat stopped at Koh Mor, she took Rajiv to the shallows and taught him to snorkel. Jayne, though encouraging, proved too impatient to wait for him to master the breathing technique. But Pla stayed with him until he got the hang of it.

  Snorkelling gave Rajiv access to a world he’d only read about in books, a world illuminated by filtered light, where iridescent creatures seemed to shine back at the sun. Orange-and-white clownfish darted among the pink-tipped anemone tentacles that beckoned like mermaid’s fingers. Wrasses of shimmering purple and green nibbled at the coral. Yellow rabbit-fish with zebra-striped faces swam in connubial pairs among butterfly fish whose tiny mouths were puckered in permanent kisses. Black-and-white moorish idols, a species millions of years old according to fossil records, trailed wispy dorsal fins. Giant clams pursed their cobalt-blue lips as Rajiv’s shadow passed over them, while sea cucumbers lay scattered on the sand like discarded bitter gourds. And those were just the species he recognised.

  Captivated, Rajiv forgot his fear. When he finally managed to drag himself away from the shallows and wade back to the boat, he was astonished to learn an hour had passed.

  ‘This is it.’

  Rajiv’s thoughts returned to the present as they reached the police station. He followed Jayne into the building, a small squat box of smoked glass and aluminium. The reception area was decorated with portraits of the Thai royal family and posters extolling the benefits of motorcycle helmets, a message evidently lost on the pale man with the grazed face and bandaged arm in the waiting area. A clock on the wall showed the time as ten minutes to nine. It seemed much later, but Rajiv’s watch said the same thing. He took a seat as Jayne approached the police officer at the reception desk.

  Though out of earshot, Rajiv could see enough to guess what was happening. The young cop’s nervousness gave way to surprise then relief as he realised Jayne could speak Thai. His raised eyebrows showed Jayne had succeeded in piquing his curiosity. With a glance over his shoulder, the cop leaned forward and started talking.

  The appearance of a senior officer brought the shutters down on the exchange. The younger cop flushed red above the collar of his uniform and busied himself with paperwork while Jayne tried to engage the senior officer. But Rajiv could tell she wasn’t having much luck. The older man’s stubborn chin and tight-lipped, downturned mouth made him look like a grouper.

  ‘Bastard,’ she muttered when they were safely outside the station. ‘I was doing well until he showed up.’

  They paused in the shade of an Indian laburnum tree that was just beginning to flower, a spray of gold blossoms resting against Jayne’s head like a tiara. She lit a cigarette, offering one to Rajiv, who declined.

  ‘According to the first cop, a farang tourist found Pla’s body early yesterday morning on Princess Beach. In the shallow cave next to the shrine, to be precise.’

  ‘But we were there yesterday.’

  ‘I know,’ Jayne said. ‘But we didn’t get there until after nine, remember. Pla’s body was found at dawn and the cops would’ve been anxious to clear the scene before the tour boats started arriving.’

  Rajiv shuddered at the thought of wading in the same shallows where Pla’s body had been found floating only hours earlier. How much worse for the foreign tourist to stumble across a corpse on what should have been a relaxing walk along the beach.

  ‘Did the police say there was anything suspicious about Miss Pla’s death?’

  Jayne drew back sharply on her cigarette. ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Well, then.’

  ‘But Pla dying in a drowning accident is just wrong.’ She swatted at the laburnum with enough force to dislodge several blossoms.

  Rajiv sighed. Clearly the visit to the police station had failed to satisfy her curiosity. He tilted his head as though this might help him see her point of view. Did working as a detective predispose her to seek an explanation for every untimely death she came across? Or was it a cultural thing, the effect of growing up in Australia, which made a young person’s death unacceptable? Coming from a country where one in ten children didn’t make it to the age of five, Rajiv knew better than to try to make sense of senseless deaths.

  ‘She must be staying at the resort if she’s on the beach that early,’ Jayne said after a moment.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘The farang who found Pla’s body. The longtail boats don’t leave before daybreak. The drivers are too afraid of hitting rocks in the dark. So she must be staying at the resort on Princess Beach.’

  Rajiv could see where this was headed. Before he could protest, Jayne threw him by adding, ‘Poor woman.’

  ‘It must have been be an awful shock,’ he agreed.

  ‘She could probably use some support, don’t you think?’

  Rajiv frowned at the thought of what she was probably up to. But Jayne’s pale, heart-shaped face was the picture of innocence, her eyes wide in anticipation. Rajiv reminded himself of the first case they worked on together, the outstanding support Jayne had offered her client and how gutted she’d been when her help was rejected.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s go to Princess Beach.’

  4

  The longtail boat roared out of Ao Nang, an arc of spray in its wake. Rajiv guessed the water taxi drivers were keen to fit in as many trips as possible before the arrival of the monsoon kept all but the most capricious of tourists away. All the same, he wished their driver would slow down. He was starting to regret following Jayne on this venture. Their crowded boat was hugging the coastline, passing under overhanging limestone cliffs, veering perilously close to the rocks.

  Rajiv shifted his focus from the dark sea beneath the boat to the view surrounding them. What appeared beautiful days earlier now seemed treacherous and malevolent. Krabi’s striking landscape was formed thirty million years ago when the Indian subcontinent collided with mainland Asia. He’d known this, but only now was he struck by how violent that collision must have been, solid land mass crushed into jagged mountains and islands scattered like broken teeth across the Andaman Sea.

  Local legend had the landscape formed out of violence, too. Pla had recounted the story on the day of their tour. Princess Beach had been their first stop. Pla told of a wedding party that had become a bloodbath when the groom and his friend turned into dragons to fight over the bride, and all the wedding guests weighed in. The fighting disturbed a holy man meditating on a nearby mountain, who cursed them, saying, ‘May you all turn into stone and break into a thousand pieces.’

  Pla had pointed out mountains named after dragon parts—Rajiv recognised a craggy peak named for the dragon’s crest—and islands named after wedding guests.

  ‘What became of the bride?’ Jayne had asked.

  ‘We call her Phra Nang,’ Pla said. ‘Her spirit lives in the cave on Prin
cess Beach. On stormy nights when fishermen take refuge there, she comes to them in their dreams, bringing food and covering them with blankets.’

  Rajiv invoked Phra Nang’s spirit as the boat swerved towards the cliffs, begging her to shield them from the rocks. By the time they pulled into Princess Beach, he was ready to abandon plans for the resort and head straight for the shrine to give thanks.

  The driver idled barely long enough for them to disembark, depositing Rajiv and Jayne in thigh-deep water while he hightailed it to the rock-climbing mecca of Railay in the neighbouring bay. They waded ashore without speaking, the raucous din of insects reverberating from the surrounding jungle. The beach was crowded and they had to circumnavigate sunbathing tourists and sarong vendors to locate the entrance to the resort. Seated by the gate was a uniformed security guard, who took one look at Rajiv and pointed to a sign saying ‘Guests only past this point’. Rajiv made a snap decision.

  ‘You stand a better chance of getting inside without me,’ he murmured to Jayne. ‘I’ll meet you at the Princess Cave.’

  ‘But—’ she began to protest.

  ‘You might be able to talk your way in but not if I am hanging around. Pretend I am harassing you.’

  Jayne looked flustered, but only for a moment. ‘Leave me alone,’ she said in a loud voice.

  The guard rose to his feet.

  ‘No problem, mai pen rai.’ Rajiv raised his hands and lowered his head as he backed away.

  Jayne threw an apologetic look over her shoulder but Rajiv was used to the Thais treating him like a second-class citizen. That she was affronted on his behalf only made him love her more.

  Rajiv thought of Jayne as his own ‘Fearless Nadia’. The Australian-born Bollywood star of the thirties and forties was famous for performing her own sword-wielding, whip-cracking, lion-taming stunts. For decades Nadia’s lover was Indian director–producer Homi Wadia, though she married him only after his orthodox Parsi mother died. Rajiv couldn’t imagine Jayne being so obliging, not when even the most routine of slights offended her sense of justice.